Editor’s note: Joyce M. Short is the author of a soon to be released book, “Carnal Abusive Deceit When a Predator’s Lies Become Rape.” The book chronicles her life with a predator, the subsequent aftermath and her road to recovery. It also provides advice for victims and their supporters, and discusses the issues surrounding criminalization of rape-by-fraud. Joyce lives in New York City, where she’s a real estate broker, professional tennis instructor and a strong advocate for her community.
A Predator’s “Mark” Often Struggles to Overcome Rape-by-Fraud or Emotional Rape
By Joyce M. Short
I was hoodwinked by a charlatan. It was not until I found the appropriate terms to express what I’d experienced that I actually began to feel relief. He lied about everything ”¦ his age, his education, his marital status, military service and more. The man who seduced me, who I came to adore, was nothing but a charade.
Once I learned of his treachery, it took years to mend. It was complicated by the fact that we had a child together. As I struggled through his physical and financial abandonment, depression and the sense of defilement that resulted from his wrongdoing, I finally determined to write a book about it. Doing so enabled me to put the facts and his behavior into context. Beforehand, they were jarring memories loosely floating through my consciousness and disturbing my peace. While purposeless rumination and a sense of deprivation were eating me alive, he skipped along on his way to an affluent, secure life. My determination to write the book renewed my sense of power, which had been stripped away by his debasing actions.
Writing my story
Writing is a process, and writing about one’s painful past is fraught with starts, stops and detours. Facing the most painful memories can erode one’s spirit as we relive the actions that caused us so much grief. As I continued writing, I attempted to convey how “raped” I felt at his hands. I coined what I thought was my own invention for describing his impact, “emotionally raped.” I decided to take a look on the Internet and see if it was a term that was in common usage.
Before I completed typing all the letters, the words, “emotional rape” sprang up, denoting that the term actually existed in techno space. Before me lay several options to chose from. I was overwhelmed. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I had to take a few minutes to collect myself before I could continue. Just the validation alone that what I felt was an actual, identifiable occurrence that someone, somewhere in the universe knew about was mind blowing.
Rape-by-fraud
I’ve continued researching and writing since then. Today I understand that when someone pretends to be a person they are not in order to induce you to have sex with them, they are committing the crime of rape-by-fraud. When they deceive you about their character in order to cause you to feel a loving bond with them, they are committing emotional rape. They are defrauding you of your highest emotion, which is love.
Unfortunately, the crime of rape-by-fraud is only punishable in a number of states: California, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Emotional rape is not punishable anywhere.
If you felt raped at the hands of a predator who lied to you, but were not physically overcome, now you know why. Rape by duping someone is as much a means to circumvent your opposition as doping would be. Doping a victim to engage in sex is widely known as “date rape” and punishable by law. The act of sex does not have to hurt you physically in order to hurt you emotionally. The trauma and confusion to victims increases with the length of time that sex with the imposter continues.
Just as doctors can’t prescribe cures until the illness is known, victims of rape-by-fraud and emotional rape have a difficult time recovering from something they don’t recognize or understand. Once a person knows what they are dealing with, they can take the necessary steps to heal themselves.
fight,
I’m not trying to MAKE you change your feelings on this matter;to do so would be morally wrong.What I have been trying to do is get you to UNDERSTAND why we feel the way we do.I don’t feel like a fool.I feel betrayed.
I feel as much empathy for your story as for any stories here.So I can understand your depth of feeling.
Oftentimes a word is used in more than one way;there are more than one definition for it.What’s done to a person physically or emotionally cannot be the same act____but the same word can be used to describe the devastation;how the victim was traumitized.This discussion was NEVER about which one would PREFER over the other.
((( Hugs )))
Blossom, me too, molested at 5 by an uncle. Even anonymously it’s so tough to write it without feeling what is THEIR shame. Not ours! Thank you Blossom. Love as always.
Fight, did you drop ‘for what’s right” from your screen name? I’ m konphewsed! Maybe that’s another poster….
Hi Tea Light! Yes. I was Fightforwhatsright, but didn’t want people to have to type out the whole thing, so changed my screen name to plain “fight.”
I’ve been searching the archives for a while. I am trying to see if there are any articles about Phillip Zimbardo. He is known for many things. But, one of his most recent books discusses how ALL people believe they are good no matter what they have done to others. I think it would be a very psychologically helpful study for many people.
I have been torn over this premise since it was posted. If I agree that it was emotional rape, then I want to bring it one step further and say that, at least for me, it was emotional murder.
I am here today, but the not same Me that I was when the spath re-entered my life. I don’t mean that I am older, that both my parents passed away, or any of the other passages of real life. I am talking about the inner things that made Me, Me are gone, and have been for over 3 decades . I was always demonstratively emotional, my parents actually referred to me as ‘Sarah Bernhardt’; the term ‘drama queen’ hadn’t been coined yet. I loved to get dressed up and shopping was my favorite necessity. I would spend hours experimenting with make up. I enjoyed sporting events and movies. Needlepoint was my quiet time hobby. I had friends. I had opinions and was never afraid to let them be heard. I was not afraid to let people know what fears I had, like roller coasters.I had dreams and plans.
The spath killed all of those things. My emotions are so deeply hidden, I have feelings but I am no longer able to express them. If I cheered or cried, the spath would just walk away calling me and my actions stupid, that’s if I was lucky, if not I would get a slap or find something destroyed. Clothes, well I have not bought something for me since the mid 80s, other than the absolute basic necessities; make up, when I finally looked in my make up bag and found blue eye shadow, and solidified foundation. The spath would just dump the liquids down the sink and would smash the powders, no more cosmetics for me. The spath didn’t believe in going to ballgames or movies and if I went by myself, when I got home complete silence would ensue for days. The last movie I saw was the original Transformers back in the 80s when I took my small son. Needlepoint, I made the spath an adorable, personalized and very complicated attorney canvas that took 8 months to complete, when I gave it to him, his comment was ‘what a waste of time’ and tossed it aside. I had friends, that was until I brought the spath around. What he said to these people or they to him, I never found out; I just saw the results. People I had coffee with between classes, stopped sitting with me or didn’t acknowledge me in the halls; personal friends stopped calling and didn’t come over, they were always too busy. I never tried to make friends again. The spath always let me expresses my thoughts and then very logically pointed out to me how I was wrong. After a while I stopped expressing my ideas, why should I; he was academically brilliant (really), I was average, and he would point out every flaw with my thinking. I was never ashamed to admit that some things scared me; but he never admitted to any self weaknesses. He had nerves of steel and would never take anyone’s, including mine, fears seriously. I never expressed fear again, scared and being laughed at, at the same time is totally defeating. Like other things, the spath very logically, the spath took hold of my dreams. I wanted to go to law school and of course, the spath wanted to as well. We both took the LSAT and he got a much higher score than I did and got into the Ivy’s, I didn’t. Instead of saying that we should both go to a school we both had gotten into, the spath, again very logically, explained that we were married and he was going to be the ‘worker’, so he should make the choice.
The spath destroyed the real me. Bit by bit, he erased all of my ‘color’. Getting me back, at least a bit of me, is not like reaching into a box of crayons and filling in the blanks.
There was never love bombing. I thought it was fine people for people not to be ‘cuddly’, to be distant and ‘practical’. You see that’s how my mom acted, I thought it was normal. No, my mom was NOT an spath. She was the VICTIM of childhood sex abuse by clergy. I learned this a few years ago. I also learned that many, if not most, adults that were sexually violated as children, find it almost impossible to trust or get close to anyone even as adults.
While my spath got me to marry him by threatening to show my parents pictures secretly he took of me, he did not emotionally rape me. Sex was an infrequent tool, release, that’s it, plain and simple.
Was he capable of emotional rape–YES. Not me, but 30 years later.
NLosteverything, I wonder if you might like this site. I found it the other day. Perhaps it might inspire you to take up your quiet time hobby again. Wishing you peace and a return of you, to you. http://www.felicityhall.co.uk
lost everything,
Your description of losing who you are,made me want to cry.That’s EXACTLY how I felt! I always described it as “losing me”.I lost Me~ who I was as a woman~once I became involved with spath.
My “dream proposal” never happened,just as the lovebombing didn’t;I guess spath was too impatient to put forth any kind of effort! He simply PUT the ring on my finger_no sweet words of endearment;no “popping the question”! I was actually kinda in shock!
Spath was only cuddly during the ‘honeymoon period’.After that it was just pure selfishness.Completely opposite of what he had told me during our courtship….that he liked affection! I truly craved the affection.My mom was affectionate,but my dad was reserved.Poor mom.She just couldn’t “thaw” dad out.It was his English background.
I became isolated because of spath.I think he actually delighted in causing the rift!I’ve never been able to tell my story in it’s entirity,only in pieces,because it is a long and painful story.Over 2 decades long.
Fight, I appreciate and respect your strong conviction on this subject, though I wish I understood better.
Can an escort be raped, of course. Can an escort be emotionally raped, a more difficult question.
Background – My spath stole(was handed by a stock broker)via fraud and forgery 2 million dollars of my family’s money; in addition he actually stole well into the 6 digits, in the last week of his life, of my family’s tangible goods. He now ‘had’ money, but what could he do with it without leaving a trace. He chose internet escorting. It wasn’t money he earned, he really didn’t care if any given money lasted for only a hour or two, it was all about him and nothing to be answered for. He also chose escorting because it was the antithesis of him. It would never cross my mind that he was seeing prostitutes. His third reason for escorting was the secrecy; no one would ‘rat him out’ nor question the money.
The spath was looking for’ladies’ he could groom, from the start. He needed a gal that was willing to go along with him, yet never question anything. It took him almost 2 years and several hundred thousand dollars to find the right mark. He ‘wooed’ her; gifts, meals, getting to know her family, and of course the sex (not the for money kind), the whole nine yards. What he didn’t count on was her falling truly, deeply in love with him. She wanted the picket fences, he wanted to be hero worshiped. Her emails detail what having sex with him like compared to other ‘johns’; what he is like compared to even her ex husband.
She met him via sex; that’s what escorts do. He trapped her by emulating ‘boyfriend’; that’s what spaths do. After a while the sex for pay became a form of emotional rape.
It was not a happy ending for her. She started to email her about how much more she wanted, she even posted how unhappy she was with the relationship. He now had a big problem, he wanted a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, fantasy existence; she wanted real life love.
His mistake, he trusted her silence with too many of his crimes. Her mistake was trusting her life to him. Collision course.
This ‘lady’ had a real life medical problem and she couldn’t drink. She, however, liked to drink. He used her alcohol dependence to quiet her when she got noisy. Eventually her silence became forever.
Am I saying that she was a wonderful person, NO. She told the spath to take my mom’s meds for her use, she told him to take things from my mom’s houses for her, she told the spath to drug me so that he could be with her, she took obviously stolen checks for 20 months, she accepted more multiple tens of thousands of dollars of ‘gifts’ paid for with a fraudulently obtained credit card (of course in my mother’s name). Were her crimes punishable by the death penalty no, jail time and restitution, yes.
I can only imagine how he emotionally raped her, physically as well as raped her emotions, to get a prostitute to believe that a ‘john’ was in love with her.
He continued to use her ‘love’ after she died, actually until he died 15 months later. The inhabitants of this sub-world even lionized him more. The reality, he was trolling 2 days after her burial, just on a different site; as well as telling a fellow ‘john’ that he got too use to the apartment.
From what I have been through, I would say that if the target is ripe, it is possible to emotionally rape an escort. After a while he no longer paid her for the sex sessions, rather told her he loved her.
Hi LF bloggers. An update on the conman: 1.Completed civil suit papers and he is to be served today; 2. Sent complaint to consumer protection in the state; 3. Sent dealer/repairer complaint to the state DMV; 4. Soon as I get confirmed delivery I file the papers with the court and then the outcome is out of my hands.
The other day had to drive past his shop bec. my kid had a dentist appt. on same street. My heart wanted to jump out of my chest–he was outside working. After appt. drove past him on my way to notarize the suit–irony.
LF readers, I don’t know if it is worse to stay engaged through a suit. However, I could not lay down and let him walk off and not have to answer to anyone.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone had to deal with a con/spath in the court after being romantically involved. I imagine it’s a circus of lies, Oscar performance acting, and pity ploys. It doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that I reclaim my voice and my power. I have the ability to respond. That’s all.
DW
DW – I’ve spent quite a bit of time in court with the ex-spath – 3 small claims cases and a family court case. He basically conned me and I COULDN’T just walk away and let him get away with it again like he seemed to his whole life. As far as I know I’m the only one of his victims to ever do that…haha! and he loves me for it, as I’m sure you can imagine. and yes, it was a circus of lies.
Some tips – do NOT get excited or react when he lies. Basically ignore them. He will have to provide proof to back-up what he’s saying just as you will. My ex claimed he owed me nothing over and over but I kept track of every cent I ever lent him and I ended up being awarded $65,000 in judgements (not that I’ll ever collect it but the money was NEVER the point). Do NOT get emotional if you can help it. I had a couple times where the tears flowed a little but I kept my composure as best I could. Do NOT try to respond to his allegations until it’s your turn to speak (speaking out of turn to judges really ticks them off…LOL). Do NOT attack your ex…just state the facts.
I represented myself in 3 of these cases and it made me pretty comfortable in the courthouse. I’d imagine I would have spent tens of thousands of dollars if I had a lawyer. At a couple of times I was in court every other week because HE wasn’t complying with orders and they kept telling us to come back so he could provide the information we needed. He was ordered to produce his financials 7 times and to this day never has. I really don’t know how they get away with that. But I use that in my current cases to prove that he has no intention to ever provide that info…and the reason is because he makes way more money than he lets on. I have court with him again on June 13th…it’s a payment hearing to address why he hasn’t made ONE payment on the money he owes me..lol Now he says he’ll go bankrupt…bring it on, buddy. I can’t wait to talk to the trustees and tell them what he’s all about…and if I can convince them my cases were a result of fraud, my debt won’t get wiped out. If it does get wiped out, I’m ok with that too though because as I said before, it isn’t about the money…it’s about holding that man accountable for his actions. And I seriously enjoy watching him squirm and have his temper tantrums in court…lol.
These stories are sad, and reminders that the world is full of dysfunction. I believe since most men aren’t spaths, we aren’t ready when we find one. We are too trusting and make excuses for them, because we believe they must be ok, they had a hard life, were abused, or whatever. We take them at face value- Isn’t this where we get sucked in, ignoring the little lies, and making excuses for him when he isn’t adding up? We have to start remembering the red flags, the little lies and inconsistencies, and look into his values (if he has any) before we become attached.
pattywack,
You are so right. But worse still, society is always making excuses for them. I get sick watching movies of the wayward dad returning to fulfill his abandoned family. He is always represented as the healed warior who has returned to the fold and forgiven for leaving his family behind to sink or swim. Of course he is also miraculously reforemed and healed unlike a true psychopath.
But here I am in real life, blamed by the returning warrior (barf). The sperm donor returned, supposedly healed, long lost forgiven and he has converted my adult daughter to a shodow of her former self. I can see now that he trauma bonded her when he left to move in with his new target. I can see now that he fed her lies all of her life and subverted all of my efforts to save her. He actually convinced her that he did the right thing by leaving his third wife when she had cancer.
Sad, yes. I write here to warn other parents. They will destroy their their own children if it suits them simply because they can. And socity supports it, the legal system supports it. It is much, much more than just our being too trusting. It is a planned and biased pro-father society that holds men less accountable and blames the victim or mother for trying to protect her children.
Whatever you do, do not have children with a psychopath and if you do, get them to give up all parental rights regardless of the financial cost. They can be bought off for a price and they will think they won.